Purpose: Teachers' resistance to educational reform has been explored, with special attention given to the reasons driving opposition and the resistance practices employed inside school walls. These studies have not, however, examined the agenda setting strategy employed by teachers opposing new policy on the national level, nor has any extensive…

In this policy brief the author shows that contracts negotiated by local teachers' unions and district administrations allow for more flexibility than conventional views suggest. CBAs (collective bargaining agreements) are quite varied in their contents, and many school boards and unions have used the flexibility inherent in contract negotiations…

We offer a concise history of teacher retirement plans in the United States, highlighting the increase in the generosity of the plans over the past 25 years. We employ data from plans in all fifty states to estimate the impact of a set of social and economic variables on the plans' replacement rates for a hypothetical teacher. We find that, at the…

The literature on teacher hiring and assignment tends to omit definitions of these key terms. An exception in Cohen-Vogel and Osborne-Lampkin (277), who define teacher assignment as "the reciprocal process between school management and teachers to guide decisions about who will teach, where they will teach, and what they will teach." But the…

This report details the findings of a national project on union retirees and retirement programs. Chapter I provides an introduction and discusses the history of the project, project design, and structure of the report. In Chapter II, the study of union retirees is detailed and a comprehensive data base of information on union retirees is…

Discusses the unionization movement among middle-level administrators in public schools and describes some of the characteristics of the unions. (Author)

Most of the leadership throughout the labor movement have been concerned about the lack of rank and file participation in labor unions. An evaluation of the relationship of labor education and union participation is explored. (WL)

An outline of training requirements for the following members of rural workers' organizations is presented: ordinary member, voluntary branch and regional officers, voluntary national officer, full-time regional field official, full-time national official, officials with experience in the organization, and officials appointed for their…

Unevenness in class conflict across unions affects which unions issue organizational demands, and interunion diversity in socioeconomic status affects which unions issue redistributive demands. (Author)

Results of 196 usable surveys from and 22 interviews with union organizers showed that some service sector and pink-collar occupation organizers used different organizing styles in predominantly female occupations. Female organizers, especially in manufacturing unions, tended to be explicitly gender conscious. (SK)

When the nation's largest teachers' union convenes in Los Angeles for its annual meeting, the membership news will ring happier than in 2004. Then, the National Education Association's count of active-teacher members was down for the first time in 18 years, according to union officials. But over the past year, that number has grown by about…

Taken from a speech delivered in 1968 to a group of California library executives.

This article provides experience-based suggestions for principals on how to anticipate and avoid situations involving political considerations in dealings with parents, teachers, teacher unions, the central office, parent organizations, school boards, and community groups.

In "Toward a More Comprehensive Model of Teacher Pay"--a paper presented at the February 2008 National Center on Performance Incentives research to policy conference--Julia Koppich examines recent policy initiatives implementing new approaches to teacher pay. Her discussion focuses on four current initiatives: ProComp in Denver, Toledo…

This report presents accounts based on first-hand interviews conducted by Han Dongfang, China's leading labor rights advocate, with workers across China. Han Dongfang was a leader of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation (BWAF), an independent labor group organized during the Tiananmen Square protests. Han today carries on the fight from Hong…